I am definitely on board with having plainer language and a more permissive default license for observation data. I think most people do want to share their data when they come on the site, and I’ve heard of folks who thought they were sharing data when they weren’t (they didn’t realize they had their default observation license to all rights reserved which they picked for their photos). Hcek, I didn’t understand the difference for a long time.
It’s a complicated topic that we shouldn’t assume the average or beginning user will understand.
I think changing this default is probably one of the single biggest changes that iNat could make to increase data-sharing (and I think it would be broadly supported).
I understand a lot of the issues for and against the current default photo license (in threads cited by @earthknight and @cmcheatle above), and my sense is that, while the current situation is a compromise that leaves no one perfectly happy, there isn’t going to be a strong consensus to change it.
So leaving the photo license issue aside, I think having an option that says something like that proposed by @wouterkoch is a good idea:
“Do you want to share your observation data with scientists?” (and then one of the little question hover icons that would explain this means your data will be shared to GBIF and what license it would have).
I’d also be in favor of having the option to filter for observations (not just photos) by licensing, as I’d prefer to concentrate on observations being shared and not restricted. Being able to filter for those could also address issues like those in this thread, with questions about sharing/citing maps from iNat which show both observations with licenses that allow sharing and those that are all rights reserved.